If you or a loved one has been injured at a grocery store or in their parking lot, contact us today for a free and confidential consultation. Edith Pearce is an experienced Philadelphia premises liability lawyer, whose years of experience have taught her how to leverage her “insider” industry information to get full and fair compensation for her clients.
Grocery store injuries in Philadelphia
Philly is home to all sorts of great grocery stores. We have Whole Foods, now owned by Amazon, Trader Joe’s, Save-A-Lot, ACME, Mariposa, ShopRite, ALDI and more. In the Philadelphia suburbs, grocery stores include Giant, Wegman’s and wholesale club stores BJ’s, Costco, and Walmart Supecenter.
From the moment that we get out of our cars in a grocery store parking lot, we depend on the owner of the store and the store’s employees to keep the exterior and interior of the premises safe from dangerous conditions. What we sometimes see though are deep cracks and holes in parking lots, wet entrance floors, tripping hazards from mats, merchandise falling from above and spilled liquids in aisles.
The duty of care
Whether its mom and dad’s convenience store or a discount grocery warehouse, grocery stores in and around Philadelphia have a duty to use reasonable care to ensure that their customers are safe and not exposed to preventable harm. What that means is that owners and occupiers of grocery store property must protect the public from any existing or reasonably foreseeable harm like:
- Faulty doors
- Merchandise falling from shelves above customers
- Objects sticking out into aisles
- Uneven surfaces that can cause falls
- Accumulations of snow and ice
- Wet surfaces without proper warnings
Negligence
In order to be eligible for compensation for an injury suffered in a Philadelphia grocery store, the claimant must prove negligence. These cases get complicated quickly, so the knowledge and experience of an aggressive Philadelphia personal injury attorney from our law firm who handles liability claims against commercial owners and occupiers of land will be required. He or she will be required to show that at least one of three conditions existed at the time of the injury. Those would be that:
- A grocery store employee created a dangerous condition that caused the claimant’s injuries
- An employee knew that a dangerous condition existed that caused the injuries and did nothing about it, or
- An employee should reasonably have known about a dangerous condition that caused the injuries
Slip & fall insurance fraud
Just be aware that grocery stores are a favorite target for slip and fall fraud. So it is important to follow some basic prudence to make sure that nothing you do would jeopardize your claim.
- Don’t exaggerate your injury
- Don’t try to make things look worse by touching any items in the area
Never give a statement or medical authorization
An injury on a grocery store premises needs to be reported to management immediately. After that, rather than providing a written or recorded statement about the circumstances surrounding the accident, call us. Pennsylvania law doesn’t require you to give an opposing insurer any kind of a statement. The reason that it wants that statement is for purposes of using your own words against you in the future to attack your credibility. Don’t give the insurance company a medical authorization either. The insurer will only try to blame your condition on an old injury that you completely recovered from many years before.
Contact a Philadelphia Grocery Store injury lawyer today
Even though that grocery store owner is trying to draw your attention to merchandise that’s at eye level on shelves, it’s going to claim that you weren’t watching where you were walking, or you were otherwise not paying attention to what was above or below you. Expect critical evidence like security video footage to get lost quickly. Our knowledgeable and experienced Philadelphia grocery store accident attorneys have seen a wide variety of injury cases. They’ll be able to accurately assess responsibility for your accident, and advise you accurately.
After you report your injury to the grocery store’s management, contact us right away for a free consultation and case assessment. Witnesses can vanish into thin air, and evidence can get lost or destroyed, so you’ll want to act quickly.